The former president of Carige Giovanni Berneschi agreed to a sentence of 2 years and 10 months before the Gup of the Milan court Raffaella Mascarino in the proceeding relating to an alleged € 22 million scam against Carige Vita. In all, the Gup has ratified 5 pacts. In addition to Berneschi, Ferdinando Menconi (the former CEO of Carige Vita Nuova) negotiated 2 years and 6 months with suspended sentence, the entrepreneurs Sandro Maria Calloni and Ernesto Cavallini (both at 2 years) and the accountant Andrea Vallebuona (a 1 year and 11 months). The Gup also ordered the confiscation of 21.9 million euros from the accused.
Crimes alleged in various capacities include conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering and forgery. According to the allegations, Berneschi and Menconi had made the bank’s insurance branch buy real estate and company shares by complacent entrepreneurs at inflated prices, through artificial appraisals, to reinvest capital gains abroad, in Switzerland in particular, through screening companies. The scam would have earned Berneschi and the other defendants about 22 million.
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The investigations into the alleged fraud in Carige Vita Nuova had been opened by the prosecutor of Genoa and the trial in first and second instance was held before the Ligurian city court. However, in October 2019 the Court of Cassation annulled the appeal ruling, considering that Genoa did not have territorial jurisdiction over this matter and postponing the documents to Milan. On appeal in Genoa, Berneschi was sentenced to eight years and seven months of imprisonment, five months more than in the first degree. The legal defenders had raised the question of territorial incompetence, because the possible crime of money laundering, the most serious of the contested ones, would have been committed in Milan.
The Supreme Court accepted this approach and the proceedings restarted in Milan at a preliminary hearing. The file was among those affected by the fire that destroyed part of the seventh floor of the Palazzo di Giustizia in the Lombard capital and today the preliminary hearing has been reached, with the ratification of 5 plea agreements.
Before the Court of Appeal of Genoa, Ferdinando Menconi was sentenced to eight years and six months, the accountant Andrea Vallebuona to six years and a month and the entrepreneurs Sandro Maria Calloni to nine years and seven months and Ernesto Cavallini to eight years and six months . At the end of today’s council chamber, Gup Mascarino also indicted some defendants with minor positions for the crime of forgery. The trial for them will begin in September 2021 but the statute of limitations will start shortly after, on November 18, 2021.